Land roller implements are used to compact and flatten the ground in agriculture and other applications. A common type of land roller has a center section that is towed by a tractor or other tow vehicle and features a central roller, and a pair of fold out wings that are hinged to the center section for pivotal movement relative thereto about upright axis, and that each carry one or more rollers. The wing rollers lie longitudinally of the implement behind the center section in a transport mode of the implement and span laterally outward from the center section in a working mode.
Examples of such fold-out land roller implements can be found in US2008/0314605, U.S. Pat. No. 8,820,428, CA2668238, and CA2810124. Other folding implements, including land rollers and other agricultural implements, can be seen in DE3634175, DE8528463, DE29815637, EP-461280, ES2128911, U.S. Pat. No. 4,479,554, U.S. Pat. No. 4,896,732, U.S. Pat. No. 6,119,788, U.S. Pat. No. 8,118,110 and U.S. Pat. No. 8,342,256.
In some implements with multiple roller sections per wing, a break or gap in the effective land-rolling area of each wing is avoided by supporting the rollers in fixed positions on the wing that longitudinally-overlap one another while being horizontally offset from one another, whereby the rollers lie one in front of the other in the working mode of the implement and provide continuous roller coverage over the full length of the wing. However, the horizontally offset positions of the statically supported rollers increase the width of the machine across the folded up wings in the transport mode.
Accordingly, there is a need for a land roller solution that helps reduce or minimize the transport width of a land roller with multi-roller fold-out wings.